Patches
by littlechivalry
Summary: Molly Weasley reflects. Angsty, implied slash, character death. You might want to have some tissues on hand.


**Disclaimer:** I continue to not own anything.

**(_12345_)**

**Patches**

Mrs. Molly Weasley much preferred doing things the magical way.

While Arthur fiddled with gadgets he didn't understand that would serve no real purpose anyway, she made pots and pans dance around a hot fire, clothes slither their way from dirty to clean again without the touch of water, and dust lifted itself from any and all surfaces in their small, but crowded home.

Every year, she took one night to sit by the fire and eat chocolates, fancy once-a-year chocolates, and watch needles flash bright yarn into sweaters, always the right size and infused with her joy, and all the love she had for the people that would receive them.

For more than a few hard years the sweaters were the only new thing the children received. Arthur's clothes moved down to Bill, down to Charlie, down to Percy, down to Fred and George, down to Ron, and then to Ginny. The children were good about it, didn't mind the old clothes, or didn't say so, but Molly knew it hurt them.

One day, when they were all a little younger, Arthur brought home a Muggle blanket, little pieces of color scattered across the expanse, a mosaic of a sunset, all oranges and pinks and purples and blues.

"It's a quilt, Molly, a Muggle quilt. Each piece hand-sewn."

He went on to explain all of the detail, how Muggle women, and some few men, saved scraps of their lives, old and beloved clothes, baby things, worn blankets, each with a memory attached, and then one day they put them together, little bits of their loved ones, little bits of their lives.

It could take years, he said, to build up the collections of scraps necessary to make a full quilt, then months of work planning the design and connecting the pieces, stitch by hand stitch.

Molly remember screaming at him, raising four small boys with another on the way, sweet Ron only a few months from his first appearance in the world, a house too small, and money too tight for her to afford enough time to take a deep breath and he wanted her to make a quilt? A Muggle quilt?

"What scraps, Arthur? What rags? We're wearing all the rags we own now!"

There had been more ,she was sure, about years of having just enough, and never any more, of watching her children live with second best, when all she wanted for them was everything, and she couldn't give it to them.

Afterwards she stormed upstairs to their bedroom and cried herself to sleep. The next morning found Arthur curled up on the floor outside of the door, a threadbare blanket wrapped around his shoulders. With a flick of her wand, she moved him onto the bed, smiling as the springs gently creaked into place. When he woke up she kissed him soundly, and blamed everything on the pregnancy hormones. He held her tightly and said nothing.

The quilt was never mentioned again, folded tightly and charmed against fading or moths, it was tucked into the dark corner of the wardrobe and forgotten. Next to it sat a small satchel Molly would visit from time to time.

Arthur's mother had bought him brand new, custom made robes for his wedding, even though she could scarce afford them. That day, he looked like sunset to Molly, russet hair and a beaming smile set against midnight blue robes that artfully draped the figure of a man strong enough to lean on for the rest of her life, and not too proud to lean on her when necessary, trusting her to hold him up. When Bill got to Hogwarts, Molly cut the robes down for him. It almost broke her heart to do it, but she wanted her boy to go in looking just as fine as every other child entering the old castle. If his books were second hand and his owl an antique, even then, at least he would look like and young wizard should. The extra fabric was tucked aside for the inevitable growth spurt, but even after re-mending the robe, there were a few inches left.

Molly kept them, just in case.

Charlie's robes were scorched beyond all recognition the day Hagrid brought in a real, live dragon to show the students. He swore he'd gotten burned pushing another child away from the animals claws. Molly had been half-way through her lecture when Hagrid arrived, anxiously twisting his umbrella in his fist, guiding a first-year student to say 'thank you' to the boy that saved her life.

The few scraps she had still smelled of smoke.

After reading books about Muggle infra-red and heat-seeking technology, plus older magazine article about mood rings that they had dug up somewhere, the twins had managed to dye the robes of every professor to match their personalities. To no one's surprise, Snape had remained in his somber black, Dumbledore's usually riotous blend of bright and clashing patterns had become even more blinding, and Professor McGonagall's robes had turned a jaunty scotch plaid. The only shock that year was the DADA professor, whose robes had turned such a dark black as to put Severus's robes to shame. He had been summarily dismissed and though the results of a search of his quarters had never been revealed, stories had been bandied about that Molly hoped fervently hadn't been true.

Still, the small piece of fabric reminded her, as if she could ever forget, that there was always evil in the world.

Ron's dress robes had needed a bit of a trim before he got them, sleeves too long, and he wouldn't mind a bit of lace off of the throat. There was so much, after all.

Ginny was her only girl, as much like her rother as she was like Molly herself. None of the boys realized who they truly took after, but Molly got the feeling sometimes that Ginny did, wrapped up in her mother's hand-me-downs.

Pieces of flowered fabric rested with their brothers.

Percy had been buried in new robes.

A few years before, they couldn't have afforded them, charmed to fit and never fade, charmed to protect from stains, or damage. But the Wizarding World had changed after the War, a smaller population, left poor by years of fighting and surviving, and even the richest families were struggling.

The old luxuries didn't matter much anymore.

They pinned his Prefect Badge on before they lowered him into the ground. He alone, of all his brothers, could wear the same midnight blue their father had on his wedding day. When she said good-bye, she looked at him again, for the last time and she was looking at her Arthur again, as he had been that day so long ago. Now they were both lost to her.

No one saw her cut the piece away. No one would have questioned the heart-shaped hole in the fabric.

Harry, her son in all but blood, had given her a piece of his invisibility cloak. No one else knew what she was planning, had always been planning, even before she realized it, but once he found out, he had been a willing conspirator. Hermione never knew where her Yule Ball gown had gotten too. Severus and Remus thought magical moths had gotten at the altar cloth from their Binding ceremony. Baby clothes from Bill and Fleur's girl, then boy. Ginny and Dean's twins, Fred and George's son and daughter, respectively, had all donated, though without their knowledge.

Moly didn't ask how Harry got a piece of Dumbledore's old robe, with phoenix feathers sewn through, but she added it to her collection anyway, and a few years later, when he came to her with a small scrap of silver fabric, she smiled. Draco was standing just behind him, absently fiddling with his frayed sleeve, hiding behind a ragged fringe.

She took the scrap and embraced them both, squeezing until she imagined she could feel them inside her heart. It was his baby blanket, Harry whispered in her ear, and she nodded, because of course it was.

Draco took part in their game then, Kingsley and Tonks were surprised when a sudden potions explosion doused them with a lust inducer, but everyone was surprised nine months later by a new baby and a wedding announcement.

Then Arthur had begun to fade.

The War had been hard on him, weak already from the snake attack, though he never let on, then fighting an inside war with the Ministry for years, he'd been in a private room in St. Mungo's for years. Still, Molly visited him every day, brought him food, because everyone knew there was no cooking better than Molly Weasley's, telling him stories of all of the grandchildren he would see soon, when he got better, but mostly just being with him. After so many years she didn't know how to be without him, so it was no sacrifice. But as another winter swept in, he began to leave her. He would stop eating, stop talking, and when she was there with him, he wouldn't be there, but off somewhere, in the past, in the future, she wasn't sure, but she was losing him.

She dug out the Muggle quilt, and the old bag of scraps, now much heavier, and brought it to him. Settling herself into the bed beside him, she guided his head onto her shoulder, pulling the quilt over them both, then she started emptying the bag of scraps, telling him the stories of each piece. Their friends, their children, people they had both lost, and people they had never met, but who had touched their lives.

As she talked, she sewed. It was hard at first, the unfamiliar motion made her back hurt, and she kept pricking herself. Not hard enough to bleed, but it brought tears to her eyes.

She sat there for hours, sewing and talking. She thought her voice might give out, her fingers fall off, and joked that Arthur would have to finish, but she went on.

Laying the last stitch she pulled out her wand and spelled the whole thing together, the patchwork front and back and the batting in-between. Slipping out from under the Muggle quilt, she laid the family quilt on top, squares of red, blue, and silver, black, and heart-shaped, one invisible patch winking out downy feathers at her, and she smiled.

And she cried.

Sitting down on the small couch provided, she waiting until the nursing staff came in, finally alerted by the alarm she had kept silenced for so long.

She tried to thank the young men and women who had done so much for her, for everyone in the hospital, but the words wouldn't come. Draco, who had come from the Nurse's Station with the others, heart in his throat because he knew, he knew what he would find, just held her, held her the way Arthur could, and she cried as they folded up the quilts, and wrapped the body.

She took the blankets in her arms and went home, to her family.

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**Note:** Well, that's my first truly angsty piece, and that was not even remotely the intention. A friend of mine is having her first baby soon and her shower is next week, so I thought it might be nice to make a quilt for her. I made it today, just a small lap quilt, but it got me thinking, and for once that idea 'that might make a good story' actually became a story.

I hope you enjoyed it, but even if you didn't, please review. Now I am off to drink a bottle of wine and watch My Chemical Romance on SNL.


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